Someone finally solves the "Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?" argument.

And that someone is me.

The answer is: "No, of course not."

My reasoning:

“Set at Christmas” does not "a Christmas movie” make.

Look at it this way: if you remove the Christmas setting or framework of a film involving the holiday, do you still have basically the same movie or do you have something different?

If the answer is “different,” then it’s a Christmas movie.

Debate resolved!

I’ll fling a controversy grenade on my way out: 

Using the same rationale, It’s a Wonderful Life is not a Christmas movie, either.

A fun Youtube diversion.

Ordinary Sausage, wherein a gent makes sausages from ingredients both sublime (Beef Wellington) and atrocious (toothpaste).

Very enjoyable.

 

It always makes me laugh.

What can I say? 

I am a man of...erratic taste.

The Pope Francis Reading Game.

I'll have more about my "faith journey" (to use the saccharine phrase) of the past several years in a later post.

On a related note, the titular head of our "faith community" (sorry for the rhetorical carcinogens this fine Monday morning) doesn't bother me much these days. Probably because his role in the spiritual life of my family is virtually zero. His name appears in Latin or English at the masses we attend...and that's it. 

My Much Better Half points out how he has vanished from the Catholic catalogs we receive in the mail--and, indeed he has. The customers seem to be voting with their orders--or lack thereof.

But anyway, he continues to insist upon himself in various public statements, because of course he does. It's what humble people do.

Every pope is, by nature of his office, a spiritual leader and a politician. The latter by virtue of the fragment of the Papal States he literally rules, but also because being the head of a far-flung flock appearing in every nation around the globe forces political considerations into the daily calculus of the Successor of Peter.

Alas, our current pontiff has reversed the priority of his two roles.

The reality is, he's not a very good politician, unless you think being a cheap-shotting demagogue who torches the same strawmen over and over makes you a good politician.

Which, if you live in America, maybe you do. Wheat is the only crop we produce more of. But that, too, is for another post.

The reality is that in virtually all of his political statements, internal and external, he's a rhetorical bully. He picks safe targets and unloads on them, to the acclaim of the faction he leads. Rigidity, bat christians, the rabbit mother, seminarians who think tradition has value are mentally ill, tanning the hide of a Catholic who introduced him to a convert--weak targets all, none of whom can strike back or safe ones who can but won't. 

Classic bully. And, naturally, this is enabled by the applause of so-called fellow Catholics and non-Catholics who both enjoy watching people they dislike be smacked around.

But he won't clear his throat for actual persecuted Christians--Pakistan, Hong Kong, China--because every bully recognizes a stronger one.

Anyway, Don McClarey points out the pontiff's latest safe target: priests who objected to church closures because of coronavirus.

Stunning. And brave. 

And sure to garner applause--because it did. Note the tittering of the New York Daily News. 

Never mind that he reversed his own church closure order following an objection by a cardinal who kept his open. Self-awareness is not one of his strengths.

Forget it, Jake--it's Rome.

Now, I happen to think that church closures weren't a bad idea--so long as baptism and confession were still available. The evidence seems to point to the virus thriving in enclosed spaces with lots of people emitting aerosols. But note that I am exceptionally hostile to keeping churches closed when services in smaller spaces and with personal contact are allowed to open: restaurants, salons, gyms, to name but three.

Not that the pontiff cares about such disparate treatment--because of course he doesn't.

For whatever reason, his shtick no longer throws me off like it used to. But I understand why it still bothers other people.

So let me help by offering a fun rhetorical exercise.

In every story where the pontiff rhetorically slaps a weak target, insert the following phrase before or after his name: 

"Ever the petulant man-child."

For example, the NY Daily News report linked above now reads as follows:

On Saturday, while meeting with Italian doctors and nurses of the northern Italian province of Lombardy to offer personal thanks for selflessly risking their lives to assist coronavirus patients, Pope Francis, ever the petulant man-child, also worked in a subtle dig at conservative priests griping about shuttered churches amid the outbreak, reported The Associated Press.

Try it--it will help your blood pressure. Frankly (no pun intended), you need to laugh at his exhausted act. And what's the worst that can happen?

Some fanboi/girl snarls at you with the classic pinched look on his/her face? Sure, that's likely. But so what? Their act has earned a chuckle, too.

And now for something completely different...

Orff's O Fortuna...with slightly misheard lyrics.

Still, pretty close. Here are the actual lyrics, translated from the Latin:

My new fave.

I am rather fond of unexpected covers of songs. Some manage to elevate the source material (Johnny Cash's cover of Hurt comes to mind). Trent Reznor admitted that after he heard Cash's cover, it felt like seeing his girlfriend walk off with another guy: it was now a Johnny Cash song.

  

But some artists work in an entirely different way, sending it up and exposing just how awful the original was. Alanis Morisette's cover of "My Humps" is a brilliant example of this:

And then there's Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine. This band is the brainchild of Mark Jonathan Davis, and dares to ask the question: what would current rock and R&B songs sound like after being filtered through the stylings of a highly-mannered 70s lounge singer and his ensemble? Here is their cover of "Baby Got Back."

Good luck getting that one out of your skull. You'll never hear the original the same way again.

Not everything is in a downward spiral to chaos.

Not when Bloom County is back!

If you're not on Facebook, then you can find the new strips here. 

Something is right in the world, and I'll take it.

You know it's true.

"Lady, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave the store."

From one of the greatest films of all time:

George Lucas attempts a Jedi mind trick.

Han did not shoot first, you sad, sad fanbois.

"The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn't. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down."
Not he thought twice about it and wanted a digital mulligan. Nope, instead it was in the original scene all along.

He doesn't like his fans very much.

More to the point, I never saw how it made Han a cold-blooded killer anyway--he's being threatened with a gun, and the thug's about to pull the trigger.

Interesting...

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Your mileage will vary.

"Your challenge is to write crossover fanfiction combining Three's Company and Beastmaster. The story should use amnesia as a plot device."

Look on my Terrible Crossover Fanfiction Idea Generator, ye mighty, and despair!

Ok, it's not really mine, but you'll despair nonetheless.

Your moment of meditative leisure for today.

Or, known in the vulgar as a "timewaster":

Kenai River Run.

You'll never be so disappointed to catch a six-pound fish in your life.

Thanks to my Mom for the find, and yes, folks--you're welcome.

News of the creepy.

First, the light-hearted, and sure to be a hit in the Fellrath household: Where The Deep Ones Are, a parody of the classic children's story set in Lovecraft's Innsmouth.

Second, and just straight up eerie, an article on the Wendigo phenomenon in light of the unspeakable murder in Alberta.

On a related note, Jamie and I and a couple other certified neeerrrrrrds used to play Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu RPG, set in the world created by H.P. Acquisition of "mythos knowledge" was an integral part of the game. Essentially, what happened was if your character found some grim tome/artifact/Civil War chess set (no, really) and decided to read/examine/utilize/cast a haphazard glance at it, you would acquire knowledge of the Lovecraftian world and use it to become more powerful and to fend off the grim slavering insane extradimensional beings whom you'd be better off not knowing about. However, with each point of knowledge there was a concomitant loss of sanity, which in my opinion was the most valuable character trait you possessed. Failure to make a "sanity roll" meant your character could flat out lose it in crucial situations and could become Alpo. My character, a 20s PI armed like Mad Max in Thunderdome, steadfastly refused to read/handle/glance at any of the "weird crap."

"No, you can curl up with Abdul Alhazred's long lost Moaning and Bleeding Codex of Ghastly Ends, Professor Twitchy. I'll be over here cleaning the sawed-off. Oh, and by 'over here,' I mean Maryland."

Worked out pretty well for me, not so good for the autodidacts.

Because life cannot have been lived to the fullest...

until you've played a game where a yeti whacks a penguin with a baseball bat.

You're welcome.

BTW: 322.9

The secret is to hit bouncers.

OK--I *have* to see Kingdom of the Crystal Skull now.

Roger Ebert gave it his thumbs up, and won me over with this section:

The Indiana Jones movies were directed by Steven Spielberg and written by George Lucas and a small army of screenwriters, but they exist in a universe of their own. Hell, they created it. All you can do is compare one to the other three. And even then, what will it get you? If you eat four pounds of sausage, how do you choose which pound tasted the best? Well, the first one, of course, and then there's a steady drop-off of interest. That's why no Indy adventure can match "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981). But if "Crystal Skull" (or "Temple of Doom" from 1984 or "Last Crusade" from, 1989) had come first in the series, who knows how much fresher it might have seemed? True, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" stands alone as an action masterpiece, but after that the series is compelled to be, in the words of Indiana himself, "same old same old." Yes, but that's what I want it to be.

Exactly. Gotta go.

But The Self-Propelled Boy™ and I are seeing Speed Racer first. He passed his spelling test with a perfect score (after much, much, much, much study and drill). Given that I grew up on the cartoon, I'm only slightly less interested than he is.